


Rabbit Holes

by comeaftermejackrobinson



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drama, F/M, Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 03 AU, References to Addiction, References to Depression, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25614805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeaftermejackrobinson/pseuds/comeaftermejackrobinson
Summary: Circumstantial or not, the evidence is there. Why are these two people, who do not know each other and have absolutely nothing in common, in possession of a copy of the same picture? The answer is usually in the question, Grissom taught her that. Maybe these two people do have something in common. Maybe she has something in common with them, too. She is scared to find out. She’s better off blaming this all on a mild state of paranoia. As long as she doesn’t let him lure her into his hole, this rabbit can pass off as harmless.
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle, Warrick Brown/Catherine Willows
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

They are both allergic to celery. This fact isn't very interesting on its own. If she asked Grissom, he could probably quote off the top of his head some paper recently published by the University of Something-or-Other stating that 30% to 40% of allergic individuals are sensitized to celery. So she isn’t surprised when she first learns about this very insignificant, very random thing that they have in common. She hears about it once when they are all grabbing a bite to eat in the break room during the Collins case. She doesn't say she herself is allergic to celery. She supposes it doesn't matter. And so it isn’t their shared intolerance to the same allergen that gives the truth away.

They have eerily similar odd-shaped birthmarks, too. Same size, same color, just above their left forearms. Greg says the mark looks like a triangle cut in half. In fact, he’s the one that notices and points out this weird detail while the two CSIs are hanging around the lab waiting for test results. Neither of them pay the comment much attention -- they are otherwise occupied trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of a college dropout. And who compares people’s birthmarks, anyway? But Greg’s observation is as irrelevant as their celery allergy. The birthmarks are just a coincidence. 

They have the same blood type -- but so does 0.6 percent of the population of the United States. The subject comes up when they are investigating the murder of a young woman in a boutique hotel. She donates blood as often as she can because she is aware of how rare a type AB-negative is in this country. "I do the same for the same reasons," her colleague tells her. This tidbit can also be interpreted as mere coincidence, of course. She does cross it off as mere coincidence. At the time, there’s no reason to make anything of that particular piece of information.

It is the picture that she can't easily rule out as 'mere coincidence'. When she stumbles upon it, she is sure she's seen that place before -- several times, in fact. However, the copy of the photo she's familiar with is in much better condition than her fellow CSI's. The former has an expensive frame and is displayed on a mantelpiece for everyone to see, while the latter has been taped to the inside of its owner's locker door. She is tempted to ask a question (and she has many to choose from) but in the end decides against it because she fears the answer.

In the weeks that follow, she starts paying more attention. She notices things. She suspects she’s paranoid. She hopes she is just paranoid -- she doesn’t want to be right. She tries very hard not to let the doubts and the what ifs take up space in her head. But the doubts and the what ifs stay nonetheless. They grow stronger, more persistent with each passing day. She wants Grissom to pair them up more often so she can observe the other CSI better. Then, she begins to dread the thought of it when she starts to lose count of all the observations she’s made in only one month. She buries herself under conjectures but fails to reach any conclusions.

Sometimes, she almost succeeds in convincing herself that all the evidence she’s gathered is purely circumstantial. Two people can be allergic to the same thing, and have eerily similar odd-shaped birthmarks (same size, same color, same place) and the same blood type, and none of that should mean that they are biologically related. Circumstantial evidence on its own allows for more than one explanation. So everything else she has noticed shouldn’t really matter, either. 

She is just tired and stressed, that’s all. She is working six double shifts a week, spends three hours a day tossing and turning in bed while any semblance of quality sleep eludes her, and the other five she pretends to be alright in front of her daughter because the last thing her child needs on top of everything else is to worry about losing her mother too. In her opinion, her kid has already gone through enough suffering to last her a lifetime. She isn’t delusional, she is well aware that she cannot protect Lindsey from everything, and that the death of her father will not be the one and only bad thing to happen to her (the thought alone gives her so much anxiety she feels physically ill every time it crosses her mind). However, she can and will protect Lindsey from seeing her own mother go down a rabbit hole and spiral into self-destruction. 

So when the urge to chase this particular rabbit eats at her, she fights it. She tells herself she is just paranoid. She isn’t even sure that her suspicions about Sam are correct in the first place. She’s never asked. She supposes she wants to just be paranoid about that, too. She really fears the consequences and implications of being right. Some truths are best left hidden in the dark. Some leads are best left unexplored. As contradictory as it may sound, she wants neither to know for sure, nor to wonder. And yet she goes on wondering. How could she not? 

Circumstantial or not, the evidence is there. Why are these two people, who do not know each other and have absolutely nothing in common, in possession of a copy of the same picture? The answer is usually in the question, Grissom taught her that. Maybe these two people do have something in common. Maybe she has something in common with them, too. She is scared to find out. She’s better off blaming this all on a mild state of paranoia. As long as she doesn’t let him lure her into his hole, this rabbit can pass off as harmless.

When they eventually talk about the picture, she immediately regrets bringing it up. Luckily, the younger CSI doesn’t offer much information. “I spent a couple of summers there when I was a child. It’s a nice picture, that’s all.” The way the words are said, the shrug of the shoulders that comes with them, it all makes this place sound unimportant. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s just a childhood memory. There’s nothing else to it. The picture was probably taken by a local photographer and sold as a souvenir. Hundreds of copies could be hanging in expensive gold frames or sitting on mantelpieces or taped to teenage bedroom walls or the insides of locker doors all around the States. So she breathes a sigh of relief and welcomes the change of subject. She even offers to buy the next round of beers. She gets some decent sleep when she gets home. She takes great comfort in knowing that she was wrong about this. She lies to herself that she is probably wrong about Sam, too. 

Not long after that conversation, the lab explodes and all hell breaks loose. She gets suspended, five days without pay. The weight she’s been carrying upon her shoulders ever since her ex husband died gets much heavier. Greg could have died. Sara could have died. Guilt eats at her and she does nothing to stop it. She’ll never admit to it, but she feels like she deserves it. 

The anxiety and the guilt aren’t enough punishment, though. So when the opportunity arises, she goes looking for answers to questions she thought she’d successfully buried, only to discover that the graves she dug were shallow. When she asks Greg to do something off the record for her, she hopes that these test results will finally bring her the peace of mind she longs for, but suspects that they probably won’t. She’s setting herself up for heartache. She should know better than to go playing with the lock in Pandora’s box. 

Getting a sample of the other CSI’s DNA proves an easier task than she imagined. She buys her colleagues coffee, writes each of their names on the paper cups as to not confuse their orders, and then waits until the break room is empty to retrieve the one that she is interested in from the trash can. 

She doesn’t tell Greg where the samples come from or who they belong to. He doesn’t push for more information, and she’s thankful for that. At her request, he runs two paternity tests to establish if Donor A is the biological father of Donors B and C. The results come back positive. Without her having to ask, and before he even calls her to inform her of the results, Greg then runs a third DNA test to confirm whether Donors B and C are full or half siblings. The results prove the latter. 

When she finally musters the courage to go see Sam and confront him with what she now knows to be the truth, she doesn’t mention what else she’s learned. Something in her gut tells her that Sam remains ignorant of this person's existence, and she doesn’t want to drag more innocent people into this mess. Of course she herself has no idea how this happened either, nor does she care to find out. What’s the point, really? People travel. People lie. People have affairs. Women get pregnant with their lover’s child and let their husbands raise them as if they were their own all the time. Stranger things have happened. Stranger things keep happening. 

Before she leaves Sam's office, she takes one last look at the picture. She is afraid she may give something away if she asks about it now. Under the circumstances, she couldn't pass it off as a random comment. But her eyes linger on the photo, and he notices. 

"It's a hotel I used to own in California. Tax reasons. You don't want to know what happened with it any more than I want to talk about it."

She leaves with more questions than answers. She shares a meal with her daughter when she gets home but throws up the moment Lindsey is distracted doing something else. 

Somehow, she finds a way to drag herself to Desert Palm Hospital to wish Grissom good luck before his surgery. She gives him a hug, she smiles at him, and it all feels genuine. She realizes now how much she values his friendship, and for a fraction of a second she allows herself to admit that he is the one and only person she would choose if asked to pick someone, anyone, to be her sibling. She wishes she could confide in him. She wonders what his advice would be, but then again she isn’t sure that she would like it. 

That night she's acting supervisor at work. She pairs herself up with Warrick and assigns Sara and Nick to a 419 at the Mandalay Bay. She is relieved to see them grab their kits and walk out the door. 

She fails at convincing herself that she is doing the right thing by keeping this secret, and spends the rest of her double shift feeling sick and ashamed that she isn't strong enough to face her own blood.

She prays she will be strong enough to protect it.


	2. Chapter 2

The next time Catherine has the day off, she and Lindsey make chocolate fudge brownies from scratch. It is not very often that they get the chance to spend the morning together doing things like this. She knows how much her little girl needs her undivided attention. She wishes she could keep more stable hours, work less double shifts. Maybe even ask for a whole weekend off. Those are luxuries she can't afford, though. She's a single mother. Her job at the lab is the only source of income in her household. Up until recently, her support network consisted of only two people: her mother and her cousin, Nancy. But then Nancy moved to Phoenix, and her mother… She isn't sure she can trust her anymore. 

She tries very hard to push these thoughts away. She doesn’t want to let her anger and disappointment consume her, but the truths she’s unveiled don’t hurt as much as the forty years she’s spent hearing lies upon lies do. Every time she asked about her father, every time she sought to learn something about him, _anything_ , her questions were met over and over again with a well rehearsed story about a one-night stand with a traveling salesman who didn’t even tell Lily Flynn his real name. Catherine thinks some part of her always knew she was being lied to, just like she’s always known Sam was more than a family friend. Family friends, _married_ family friends, don’t show up once a month with expensive gifts or hang out cash to help pay the bills, and they most definitely do not make a habit of staying the night at their friend’s house, _in their friend’s bedroom_ , with the door shut. 

For some reason, she decided to ignore the evidence and kept on believing the fake stories she was fed, until one day she saw that picture taped to the inside of her colleague’s locker door. Soon thereafter she began to suspect Sam was the one who killed Vivian Verona. And then, all of a sudden, she could no longer go on without facing the truth. 

She doesn’t regret what she did. Knowledge is power. She now knows something Sam doesn’t, and she intends to make sure he never finds out he’s fathered a fourth child. She doesn’t really believe he would care, but there’s a chance that he might, and that’s a risk Catherine isn’t willing to take. She won’t let him ruin any more lives. Besides, it’s not her secret to tell. There’s a woman out there who made the choice to lie to her child, just like Catherine’s mother chose to do the same and Sam chose to be unfaithful to his wife. Catherine believes she’s entitled to her own choices, and her mind’s been made up: the other CSI is better off ignoring all of this. 

She hasn't learned how to live with this yet, but she will. She has to. In the meantime, she must find a way to put a perimeter around her wrath and pain. If she doesn't, then every minute of every hour will be tainted by these feelings. She has to think of her daughter. She shouldn't be wasting their time together visiting such dark places inside her head while pretending to be alright. Her kid doesn't deserve that. Her kid deserves to come first. She needs her love and attention more than any parent or any sibling of hers ever will. 

While they're melting the chocolate, Catherine suggests they make an extra batch of brownies for Lindsey to share with her class the following day at school. The girl shrugs her shoulders and says that it's okay, but she doesn't look too excited about it. Catherine wonders if she's agreeing to this idea just to please her. She's about to remind her she doesn't have to do anything she doesn't want to when Lindsey asks her a question. 

“Can we make one for Sara, too?” 

"Sara?" She doesn't remember anyone with that name being in Lindsey's class. "Is she a girl from ballet?" 

"No, mommy. Sara your friend from work."

What surprises her isn’t the fact that Lindsey believes Sara is her friend. Children her age are yet to discover just how complex and diverse adult relationships can be. To them, everyone’s friends with everyone. They don’t know any better. She is not going to teach her daughter she doesn’t necessarily have a friendly relationship with all of her coworkers. What surprises her is the fact that Lindsey remembers Sara, a woman she’s only seen once and under very traumatic circumstances. 

She takes her time spreading the batter into the greased pan. When she speaks again, she tries to sound as natural as possible.

“Why do you want to give Sara a brownie?” 

"She was really nice to me when I had to answer all those questions about the night that daddy died,” Lindsey explains. And then, without skipping a beat, she adds, “Did you know her daddy died when she was nine, too?”

“No, I did not know that,” Catherine answers truthfully. She’s never talked with Sara about her family. She knows the younger woman used to live in San Francisco before Grissom offered her a job in Vegas. She simply assumed her folks still lived somewhere in California. She never cared to learn more about her colleague. They aren’t close, at least not in the way that she is close to Nick and Warrick. “Did she tell you that when you were talking about the accident?” Lindsey nods. “I had no idea,” she admits more to herself than to her daughter.

“So can we give Sara a brownie?”

She is about to ask why, but she bites her tongue. She doesn’t want to give her daughter the impression that she’s questioning what’s undoubtedly an act of kindness. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to share a sweet treat with someone who was kind to you. To Lindsey, Sara is a friend of her mom’s that understands what she’s going through because she had the same thing happen to her, and she was very nice while asking questions about Eddie’s death, therefore she deserves a brownie. Children are simple like that. She hopes her little girl never loses that thoughtfulness, that compassion. So instead of asking why, Catherine simply says, “You know what? Why don’t we make brownies for Gil, Greg, Nick and Warrick, too?”

When they take the third batch out of the oven, Lindsey asks if she can go with Catherine to the lab to give Sara her brownie.

“I think Sara has tomorrow off.”

This isn't entirely true. While Sara is supposed to have the following day off, everyone expects her to show up at work anyway because that's what Sara does. Of course there’s always a chance that she may actually stay home, but Catherine wouldn’t bet any money on it. Sara hasn’t maxed out on overtime this month yet, so she will definitely be at the crime lab tomorrow. The problem is Catherine doesn’t want to take Lindsey there because she worries it will bring back memories of the night Eddie died. Lindsey hasn’t been back to visit her at work ever since the accident, and she is scared her daughter’s anxiety will be triggered if she sets foot in that building. She has enough experience as a criminalistic to know how these things are. She’s seen countless of victims and their families become upset the moment they’re back someplace that’s directly linked to the traumatic experience they have had to endure. She won’t risk upsetting Lindsey. 

“Can we go to Sara’s house, then?”

Catherine raises an eyebrow at this. 

“I don’t have her address,” she lies. 

She was at Sara’s once, a couple of months ago, the day her fellow CSI found out Hank Peddigrew was cheating on his longtime girlfriend with her. They had some beers and talked for an hour or two, and then Catherine offered to give her a ride home. But Sara is a private person, and Catherine isn’t sure she would appreciate the visit. She hopes her lie will be enough to talk Lindsey out of the idea of dropping by Sara’s place just to give her a brownie.

“Maybe Gil knows where she lives.” Lindsey says. “Can we ask him?”

At her daughter’s insistence, the words leave Catherine’s mouth before she can help herself, “Why do you want to see Sara so much all of a sudden?”

Lindsey goes quiet, and Catherine realizes how angry she’s just sounded. She takes a deep breath and reminds herself there’s nothing wrong with Lindsey wanting to do something nice for another person. If anything, she should feel ashamed of herself for letting her issues with Sara get in the way of her daughter's kind intentions. 

She's about to say she’ll call Sara to see if they can pay her a visit when Lindsey asks yet another question.

“Do you think she still misses her daddy?"

Now she understands what this is all about. She can't believe she didn't figure it out sooner. The brownie was just an excuse. What Lindsey wants, what Lindsey _needs_ , is someone she finds relatable. Someone she sees as an equal of sorts. Try as she may, Catherine can't really understand what her daughter is going through because she hasn't gone through it herself. She hasn't lost a parent. Lindsey must have questions she'll never be able to answer because she hasn't had the course of her childhood forever altered by grief. But it seems like Sara has. It seems like Sara could have the answers to some of those questions.

“Is that why you want to go see her? To ask her if she still misses her dad?" 

Lindsey nods. There are tears in her eyes now, but she’s fighting them. Catherine wonders if she’s learned that from her, if she’s doing something wrong to make her daughter believe she shouldn’t cry when she feels the need to. Ever since Eddie’s death, she’s only shown emotion once. How can that be healthy behaviour? How didn't she see before today that she was probably hurting her daughter more than she was helping her cope?

When Lindsey’s next question comes, Catherine’s heart breaks for her all over again. 

“Do you think I’ll ever stop missing my dad?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Catherine falls to her knees and gathers Lindsey into her arms. She buries her face in the crook of her mother’s neck and finally allows herself to cry. 

She wishes more than ever that her daughter didn’t have to know at such a young age what it’s like to be a survivor. She wishes she could take the pain away, or at least promise her little girl that everything will be alright. But how can she do that when she herself has no idea what the future holds? Promises break before they’re made. She won’t make the person she loves the most a promise she isn’t sure she’ll be able to keep. She might not be flawless, but she won’t follow in her mother’s footsteps and make up the story she thinks her girl wants or needs to hear. Lindsey doesn’t deserve being lied to. 

Her lips are trembling and tears are streaming down her cheeks when she cups her daughter’s face in her hands and looks into her eyes. They’re blue, just like hers. Just like Sam’s. And they’re nothing like the sibling’s she didn’t know she had until a week ago. 

“You will always love and remember you father,” she says. “He'll be a part of you forever. It's okay to miss the people that we love." 

"But what if I start to forget him?” Lindsey sobs. Catherine can tell this is something that’s been eating at her for a long time now, perhaps even since the night of the accident. “What if I wake up one day and I can’t remember him?” The girl buries her face in her mother’s chest, and Catherine holds her tight. “I don't want to forget him, mommy! I don’t want to forget dad!" 

They sit on the kitchen floor and cry for a while. Afterwards, Lindey’s so exhausted she ends up falling asleep on her lap. Scared of waking her up, Catherine doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t even dare to run her hand through the girl’s blonde hair. She just waits, and she thinks about the conversation they had and the fears Lindsey shared with her, and then she reaches a conclusion and makes a decision.

She really does hope Sara likes chocolate fudge brownies with pink sprinkles on top. 


	3. Chapter 3

Sara Sidle has always had trouble sleeping. She can’t remember a time when she didn't. As a result of a traumatic and troubled childhood, she had no other option but to learn from an early age how to function properly and effectively in spite of her insomnia. When she was a child, her parents' fighting kept her up. When she was in foster care, the bigger kids would often threaten her with stealing and destroying her copy of _Moby Dick_ , the only item she had asked to take with her the night her mother killed her father. The fear of having the book taken from her made it impossible for Sara to stay asleep for more than forty minutes at a time. 

Now that she’s an adult, she is scared of the nightmares. Every time she closes her eyes and darkness takes over, she hears the voices of the victims she couldn’t help, sees the faces of the criminals that walked away. So she deliberately makes the choice of only resting when she’s truly exhausted herself. Sometimes she spends two or three hours in the shower, sitting fully dressed on the floor. The ice cold water helps her stay up for longer. She also uses this technique when she wants to keep thoughts of Grissom out of her mind. Lately, she’s been spending a lot of time shivering in her soaked clothes. 

She loves him so much it hurts. The pain she feels when she thinks of him has escalated from emotional to physical in a matter of months, and she has no idea how to deal with it any more than he knows what to do about ‘this’. Her chest aches every time she’s near him. She comes undone every time they touch. And yet she craves the sight of him, and his presence, and his voice, and his touch, and the things he says and the things he doesn't. She loves him in his silence, loves him in spite of his aloofness, loves him even when he insists on keeping his distance. There is nothing about Gil Grissom that she doesn't love. There is nothing he can do to make her stop loving him, and that scares her because it means that if she ever wants to stop feeling like this, then she is on her own. He won't even help her with that, the son of a bitch. 

What's even more frightening, she _craves_ _him_ , all of him. Even when he hurts her. Even when his coldness and indifference are killing her. She craves whatever crumbs he wants to throw her way. She waits for the phone to ring on her days off, waits for him to ask her to drop whatever she is doing to go assist him with some complicated triple murder. She maxes out on overtime every month because she doesn't want to be anywhere that he isn't, and he is always at work. Anyone could argue that she deserves better than being trapped in this perpetual state of waiting, but Sara Sidle doesn't want better. She wants Gil Grissom, God help her. 

“‘As if you could pick in love,” he quoted to her once during a case “as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard.’” 

Sara didn’t believe in love at first sight before she met him. She didn’t have faith in anything. But then she signed up for one of his seminars, and one morning her atoms and his came to be in the same place at the same time. His mere existence was the answer to a prayer she never said. He restored her faith in humanity. He still does. After all, he is the one person that keeps proving time and time again that she has the ability to love.

She has long ago stopped wondering if she’ll ever be able to look at him without being crushed by the weight of how much she wants and needs him to reciprocate her feelings, if she’ll ever be able to get over him. She has known for quite some time now that those things will never happen. Something deep inside her tells Sara that she will navigate the rest of her earthly existence carrying a broken heart nested between her ribs. 

He’s the only person she’s ever loved, the only person she would bleed herself dry for if he ever asked such a thing of her. There is nothing she wouldn’t give him. There is nothing she wouldn’t do for him. But none of that is good enough. _She_ is not good enough. 

She fears the day that he will finally find someone worthy of his affection, fears what that will do to her. But even if that were to happen, she isn't sure she would up and leave him. She knows she should have left over a year ago, plant or no plant. She is a masochist for staying. Now she'll never leave unless he tells her he wants her gone. She'd only walk away from him if he asked her to. The problem is he seems to enjoy having her around, looking at him with those eyes full of adoration, hanging on his every word, desperate to be noticed and praised by him, surviving on whatever little interactions they have every now and then.

Fuck him for keeping in contact with her after they met at that seminar he taught. Fuck him for offering her a job in Vegas. Fuck him for sending her that stupid plant she cares for better than she cares for herself. Fuck him for making her love him so much. Fuck him fuck him fuck him. 

Fuck her for lying to him when she told him she knew what to do about this. The truth is she doesn't have the first idea. She isn't even sure she knows how to survive anymore. To think that after all the shit she's gone through ever since she was born, it will be Gil Grissom's inability or unwillingness to love her that finally succeeds in destroying her. One would suppose Sara Sidle was tougher than that. 

She feels the anger and frustration building up inside of her. She wants to scream until her throat goes raw, wants to curl up in a ball and cry until she falls asleep on the bathroom floor, fully dressed and with ice cold water soaking her clothes to her skin. She is dying to feel something different than this pain, anything. 

She is dying. There's nothing figurative about it. She doesn’t know how long it’ll take until her heart finally gives out, but she would bet whatever little sanity she's got left that it will happen sooner or later. Loving Grissom is going to kill her. 

And yet she doesn't wish for one second that she could have picked in love. If given the chance, she would choose him over and over again. Grissom is her lightning bolt that splits her bones and leaves her staked out in the middle of the courtyard. She doesn't want anyone else. She doesn't know any other type of love, either. 

She is about to turn on the shower when she hears her cell phone going off in the other room. She is surprised when she sees the name of the caller displayed on the small screen. This person rarely calls her on her phone unless they're working the same case, and even on those occasions they just usually page each other when they need to pass on new information. 

Like (almost) everything else that she does, her decision to answer the phone is linked to her feelings for Grissom. She has this (kind of) irrational fear that her fellow CSI may be calling with some bad news about their boss. He hasn’t been himself lately. She can tell something’s off. She isn’t sure what's wrong, but she suspects he’s talked to other people about it. People he trusts. It hurts like hell that she is not among those friends he shares his secrets with. It hurts that he doesn’t trust her.

_Fuck him fuck him fuck him._

_Fuck me for loving him this much._

“Sidle,” she says. 

“Hey, Sara, it’s Catherine. Got a minute?” 


	4. Chapter 4

When she picks up the phone, Catherine can tell just by the sound of Sara's voice that the younger CSI has not been sleeping well. This doesn’t surprise her. She knows the other woman suffers from severe insomnia. Personally, Catherine suspects Sara may suffer from depression, too, but she's never talked about it with anyone in the team. She wonders if someone else’s noticed the signs, or if the signs are really there to begin with. Maybe she’s mistaken. Maybe Sara is just tired. Catherine chooses not to dwell much on this. Every time certain thoughts cross her mind, she simply pushes them away (she’s become very good at this as of late.) Her main concern should be -- _is_ \-- Lindsey. So when Sara says _Hey, Catherine, what's up?_ she doesn’t ask her if she’s feeling well (it doesn’t sound like it) or if she’s slept at all ever since she got off shift several hours ago (she probably hasn’t). All she asks is _Are you home?_ and hopes that her colleague won’t mind a last minute visit from her and her nine-year-old. 

"Yes, do you um, need me to go to the lab?" 

"I was wondering if Lindsey and I could stop by your place in, say, twenty minutes?" She tries to sound natural. Casual. Relaxed. This call is anything but, though. Catherine never imagined that one day she would have to ask Sara Sidle to talk to her daughter about the loss of a parent, or that brownies would be involved at all, or that this would all take place practically on the same week after she confirmed that her mother lied to her about her identity for her whole life. 

Truth be told, she never imagined a lot of the things that have happened in the last couple of months, either, with Eddie’s death being, cold as it may seem, the least puzzling of them all. She understands why her ex husband was killed. She’s not made her peace with it yet, or with the fact that whoever shot him got away with it, but on a logical level she can understand _why_. Eddie always liked playing with fire. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, but Catherine can make sense of his death. After being a crime scene investigator for over ten years, she is rarely surprised at what some people can do to other people. Drugs, jealousy, businesses gone wrong -- those are very common motives to murder someone. 

What she cannot make sense of is everything else going on in her life, not because she isn’t used to dealing with all different kinds of shit but because she can’t believe she’s been working for years now with someone she is biologically related to, something that seems right out of the plot of a very badly written (but very popular, nonetheless) best seller fiction, the likes of which her cousin Nancy loves reading. Though it’s a well known fact that Sam was never faithful to his wife, Catherine still doesn’t have the first idea how he got involved with the other CSI’s mother. She has theories, of course. She doesn’t want to dwell on any of them, but they keep popping into her mind anyway, and she keeps entertaining them every morning while tossing and turning in bed instead of getting some much-needed sleep. 

But since she has decided that no one will ever know the truth about Sam’s fourth child, Catherine should not be thinking about this at all. The more she lets all these theories and ideas take up space in her head, the harder they are to bury and leave behind, which is exactly what she promised herself she would do. 

_Focus only on Lindsey._

"Did something happen?” Sara asks, and Catherine feels oddly moved by the note of concern in her voice. She knows Sara feels guilty that she failed to gather enough evidence to make a strong case and put Eddie’s killer behind bars. She also knows she shouldn’t have treated her the way that she did. The things she said, the look of hatred and disappointment in her eyes -- Catherine’s not proud of any of that, and she actually doesn’t believe that pain and grief should give a person the right to be cruel to others. And she was cruel to Sara. She hopes to have made things right somehow when she offered the younger CSI her support the day she found out that Hank was cheating on his girlfriend with her, hopes things are okay between them now. She isn’t sure. She can never be sure of anything when it comes to Sara. If she’s learned something during the past three years is that the woman is impossible to read and decipher, Grissom being perhaps the only person who comes close to fully understanding her. _But I can’t expect Gil to help me with this,_ she thinks. _Not now, anyway, not right after his surgery._

“Lindsey mentioned that when you were investigating Eddie's murder you told her you lost your father when you were her age --” Catherine says, determined not to waste any more time on small talk. 

The other woman interrupts her quickly, "I thought that knowing that I understood how she was feeling would help her open up.” Sara sounds apologetic now. Ashamed of herself, even. “I shouldn't have said anything, I'm sorry…"

Catherine cuts her off before Sara wrongly assumes she's being blamed for telling Lindsey about her father's passing. Catherine wonders if the man was gravely ill, or if he had an accident perhaps. Maybe he was old -- or at least older than Sara’s mother. Maybe something terrible happened to him, and that’s the reason why Sara was drawn to forensics. Catherine knows that her own interest in becoming a crime scene investigator was partially fueled by the murder of her friend when she was still working as an exotic dancer at the Moonlight. 

_Stop getting distracted,_ she tells herself. _Focus on Lindsey and what she needs._

"Could you talk to her?" It’s almost abrupt, the way the words finally leave her mouth. When she says them, she isn’t entirely sure what she’s thinking anymore. These past months she’s thought too much, cried too much, hurt too much. She only knows that she needs to deal with this one thing before she changes her mind and decides that going to Sara for help is a mistake. 

"Talk to her?" Sara doesn't hide her surprise at what’s being asked of her. 

"She had a breakdown today, asked me if I think she’ll ever stop missing her dad,” Catherine explains. She looks over her shoulder to make sure Lindsey’s still playing in her room, where she left her five minutes ago with the promise that she would call Sara. “She's scared that she's going to start forgetting him. And I don’t know what to say to her because I’ve never gone through anything like this, so I’m not sure she believes me when I tell her that her dad will always live in her heart or that it’s okay to miss the people that we love. She wanted to see you because she knows your dad died when you were a kid. I guess she wants to hear from you that you remember him and that things got better eventually, that you…”

“That I don’t miss him all the time?” Sara chuckles. 

"That you have learned to live with it." 

They stay in silence for a second or two, and it’s only now that Catherine fully realizes that she may be out of line here. No -- she is _definitely_ out of line here. What was she thinking, really?

_I wasn’t thinking at all._

“You know what? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called. You’re a private person, you never speak about your family. I have no right to ask you to talk to my daughter about your father. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up…” 

She has no idea what Sara’s life has been like. She doesn’t know how her father died, doesn’t know how she’s dealt with it, or if she’s dealt with it at all. It is only now that it occurs to her that Sara’s inability to deal with certain things at work may be the result of unresolved issues that go all the way back to things that happened to her when she was a child. Catherine has no proof that this girl, who looks so broken and so sad most all the time, who visibly struggles to give the impression that she’s strong even when it’s obvious that she’s coming apart, has learned to live with the weight of her losses. It was wrong of Catherine to assume. It is wrong of her to ask Sara to teach her daughter how to cope, how to handle the pain, how to keep going after living through such tragedy. She should have thought this over twice before picking up the phone. This subject is too serious, too personal. She and Sara aren’t friends. She has no right to ask this of her, has no right to ask about a past that Sara’s only shared with a scared nine-year-old in order to help her talk about what was the worst, most frightening moment of her life. She has no right to expect Sara to share her own trauma with her daughter and give her advice as to how she should navigate it. 

“Could you be here in thirty minutes?” When Sara speaks, it’s as if Catherine’s attempts at an apology never reached her ears. “I have nothing to offer you guys. No snacks, no milk, no orange juice. But I can go to the grocery store and be back in half an hour.”

There’s another pause, but this time it feels different. Catherine wouldn’t know how to describe it, but the air has cleared, and some of the tension is gone. She may even go as far as to say that Sara sounds calmer than she’s ever heard her before. For a split second, and for the first time in a really long time, Catherine feels something akin to peace. It doesn’t last long, and it’s gone before she can even finish processing it, but it’s there. She wishes she could hold onto that, feels sad that it’s escaped through her fingers like water or sand. 

“Lindsey and I made brownies,” she says, finally. 

“Great. I’ll make sure to get some milk then.” She can _almost_ picture Sara grinning. 

Suddenly, Catherine feels inexplicably fond of the other CSI, and a wave of gratitude washes over her. She tries to put this into words, but fails. When she opens her mouth, no sound comes out of it. Before she can try to form a coherent sentence again, her colleague says that she’ll see her soon and that she better hurry if she wants to be back from the grocer’s by the time Catherine’s there with Lindsey. And so Sara ends the conversation before Catherine has time to express how much she appreciates her agreeing to do this, or how surprised she feels, how undeserving of the woman’s compassion, especially after how she treated her when Eddie’s killer walked away (or how she’s treated her ever since she moved to Vegas for that matter.) 

Out of all of the things that have happened to her this year, the one Catherine Willows can make sense of the least is the fact that she’s driving to Sara’s home on her day off, with Lindsey in the backseat holding a tray of warm chocolate brownies as if it were the most precious thing in the world, in the hopes that this tooth-gapped girl from California may be the one to help her daughter begin to heal by sharing her own story, something Catherine herself can’t bring herself to do with her own half-sibling because the idea of the truth coming out terrifies and mortifies her more than the possible consequences of concealing it from others does. 

_You’re doing the right thing,_ she tells herself. _Focus on Lindsey, nothing else matters. You’re doing what’s best for everyone. No one can find out that you know what you know._

She’s almost convinced that taking this secret to her grave is the best she can do in order to protect her own blood, just like she’s almost convinced that allowing Sara into Lindsey’s life is the best she can do to help her daughter. 

She has no idea she’s about to screw everything up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always love to hear from readers, so it would mean a lot for me if you took a minute or two to let me know what you think of the plot and the story so far. And of course, I'm dying to know: who do you think is Catherine's half sibling and why?
> 
> Thanks to my wonderful BFF @disheveledcurls for reading this chapter before I posted it, and for listening to me go on and on about CSI and this fic (I know I do talk a lot about CSI, haha.) She's an amazing writer, so I recommend you go check her stuff!
> 
> I'm already working on the following chapter, and I hope to finish it soon!


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